As many of you know, I am a member of Story Sessions, an online community of creatives (who I am totally in love with). Throughout the year, SS offers Collectives--smaller, focused groups (think: workshop) that run for 40 days. This time around, I am joining up with Jamie Bagley for 40 Days of Blogging and following her prompts. Just fair warning: to maintain my own sanity, I am writing these "5 Minute Friday" style, meaning... I'm setting a time limit and writing without editing. The process doesn't make for the best writing, but it's just about the only way I'll follow through with 40 straight days of posting.

Prompt: “I want to live my life in healing rhythms that honor the limits of my body, the pleasures of rest, and the delights of play.” Christine Valters Paintner

Arms stretched out, hands rested on either side of the pulpit. Eyes narrowed, head tilted opposite a crooked grin. And then, the challenge issued in the shape of a declaration:

"We can sleep when we're dead!"

My heart pounds against the words, the idea that we must hurryhurryhurry through this life, exhaust ourselves and our resources and our families for the Lord. I scan the room, glancing from the single mom to the businessman who just flew back in town this morning. I see the grandma wrangling three grandchildren and a yawning wife holding her husband's hand. To my left, a teenager fidgets in his seat. On my right, my own dad shifts his weight and extends his back, struggling to find relief from rhumetoid arthritis.

The words echo and I silently argue back. Can't you see? We are a tired people.

I doubt whether this is it, the pinnacle of Christian existence, that we pay no attention to the rhythms, needs, and limits of our own bodies and embrace lives of chaos, of checklists and guilt-induced service. I doubt whether this is what Jesus had in mind when he promised a yoke that is easy and a burden that's light.

We can sleep when we're dead is a lie because these God-designed bodies need sleep now. We can sleep when we're dead is a lie because our God-given command is to exchange anxious living for peace. We can sleep when we're dead is a lie because it calls for more, more, more to be given, as if we have something to prove to God and each other.

Do we often waste our energy and hours in the wrong places? Sure.

Is the answer less sleep and more sacrifice? No. Not even a little bit.

In my experience, churches aren't full of lazy people. They're full of the hard-working, those struggling against the realities of their own limitations to get this life "right." They're going to jobs they hate and raising kids and doing Bible study and signing up to serve at the 800 millionth church event this month. They're making less money than it takes to survive and still donating to churches and charities. They're singing hymns and praying with their families and battling anxiety about what this all means and whether God is ever satisfied.

We don't need less sleep. We need a refocusing.

We need moments to pause, permission to say "no," and the space to take a deep breath. We need to know it's okay to not sign up for that camp or bake those cookies or show up to every birthday dinner for every person we ever reunited with on Facebook. We need to know that it's okay to focus on our spouses and our kids and as long as we are loving God and loving our neighbors, we're getting this all right. We need to know that won't look the same for everyone.

I am not calling for a retreat, for Christians to give up their service altogether and focus only on themselves. I am calling for an end to this madness of rushing and straining and striving. I am calling for lives of rest in the Lord and service born out of His love and not our guilt. I am calling for hands clasped in prayer because our souls ache for unity with Him and not because prayer is next on our list of things to "do."

I am calling for space for the slow life, for room to say, "I just need to rest today," and not be frowned on or scolded or lectured on priorities. I am calling for us to release our expectations, of ourselves, of each other, and the grace for not every schedule to look like that of an upper middle class family with disposable time and income.

I am calling for rhythms that honor the limits of the body, the pleasures of rest, and the delights of play.

Oh, Brittany, this is so well written and so true. I love this: "I am calling for lives of rest in the Lord and service born out of His love and not our guilt. I am calling for hands clasped in prayer because our souls ache for unity with Him and not because prayer is next on our list of things to "do."" Thank you for sharing your heart on this. :) <3